понедельник, 30 ноября 2015 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twelve - the ending)

My mother’s stories
chapter 12
My mother's triuphs and mishaps in Bashkiria 
(the ending)


So it was not astonishing that some of my mother’s things disappeared from time to time. Once, for instance, even pretty buttons on her blouse were neatly cut off. And it was not a very big surprise for her when she discovered it was not one of her suitors, as it was thought at first, but her two cousins, who maliciously continued to steal her photographs from the board of honour. Nevertheless, my mother was not inclined to leave her uncle’s house till her cousins resorted to real violence. It was my mother’s diary, I think, that roused them to this cruelty. They took it in secret and, as their reading and writing skills were rather limited, most likely asked one of their friends to read it. I can imagine how it would have intensified their humiliation if some outsider had read aloud my mother’s picturesque description of their own stupidity and lack of success among the boys.
Although there was, I think, another reason to redouble those girls’ hostility. My mother didn’t drink alcohol and in our country such weirdoes have always been strongly disapproved of by those for whom drinking is part of their culture. The refusal to drink together without good reasons has always been taken as a sign of disrespect or arrogance. Sometimes, it seems, drinkers and non-drinkers belong to different species. I remember my relief when I discovered that none of my fellow students watched attentively how much I drank. There were some jokes about it, of course, but they recognized my right to drink as little as I wanted.
Surely my mother’s cousins weren’t so tolerant. They were simple, uneducated, plain girls without any noticeable talents to distinguish them among the crowd, except that one of them was a kleptomaniac and another had squint and epilepsy. I understand they could feel ill-fated and hold a grudge against the whole world. Nevertheless, as much as I try, I can’t find an excuse for those girls’ actions.
I don’t know exactly what brought the tense relationship between my mother and her cousins to the breaking point. Maybe it was an argument because of the stolen diary or just her usual refusal to drink with them. Anyway, once when their parents weren’t at home those two harpies attacked my mother and poured the whole bottle of French brandy down her throat. Then they hurled her down on the sofa and were standing nearby, watching her and laughing their heads off. My mother told me she couldn’t stir a limb and only her tongue was moving. So she was lying motionless on the sofa telling her laughing cousins how stupid they were and promising to win their suitors away as soon as they had at least one. I believe her cousins did spill at least half of the bottle, because my mother was able to get up early in the morning. She packed her things, then burnt her diary and left her uncle’s house forever.
One friendly woman, who lived in the neighbourhood, sheltered my mother in her house. When her two sobered cousins came looking for her the woman said she was not there. Then her uncle came begging her to come back and promising on oath to punish his daughters. My mother refused point blank. Some time later she got a place in the dormitory. Maybe at that time she decided once and for all not to have any affairs with her relatives.
Years later, however, my mother always remembered Bushkiria with warm feelings. Despite all those troubles her uncle had always been kind to her, she was young and at the height of her beauty, surrounded by suitors, who always sought an opportunity to dance with her. Moreover, she successfully learnt the craft of technical drawing and was praised by her boss.
By the end of the year that she had spent in Bushkiria she received a letter written by an unfamiliar hand from her mother’s dictation. Her mother was discharged from prison at last and asked her daughter to come back, telling her how happily they would live together.
“Can you believe it?” my mother used to ask me with indignation. “She thought I would be working hard for her as I used to! And she would be combing her long black plait, reading newspapers by syllables for hours or having fun with her lovers. So I wrote to her I would rather die under the bridge. As for living happily together I reminded her that leather belt that hung on the nail near the entrance door, which she had used so often on me”.

To be continued…

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